Oldtown News

My look at the issues of our Oldtown neighborhood and other political news

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

DERA'S links to Anti Poverty Committee Cause More Trouble

Oldtown NewsVancouver, BC

DERA'S links to Anti Poverty Committee CAUSE MORE TROUBLE

The Downtown Eastside Residents Association (Dera) and its close ties to the Anti Poverty Committee are in the news again. This time a DERA worker and APC activist has been charged for allegedly spraypainting the Olympic clock

Council has also pulled some DERA funding, perhaps tired of executive director Kim Kerr, who slams council and government through one side of his mouth and eats government cash with the other.

Interesting, yesterday at the Council meeting, Vision Councillor, Heather Deal, stood up defending Dera and asked whether its president, Sister Elizabeth Kelliher, was appraised of concerns regarding the recsinding of the grant to Dera. The Vision Councillors were actually unparliamentary like in their attacks of popular Councillor, Peter Ladner, who moved the motion, to not approve the Dera grant.

While, Councillor Deal may have a close connection with Sister Kelliher, since they both hail from the United States, I'm hoping that the association ends there.

Ms Kelliher since arriving in Vancouver, has expressed herself in many ways regarding the affairs of the Oldtown district. However, she has a past which needs to be raised. Especially since she is the President of Dera and the organization receives public funds.

In New York City, Sister Kelliher was a longtime school board member of Community School. In these school board elections, and I'm quoting from a public document, "candidates violated rules in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. An investigation revealed that for whatever reasons, candidates largely disregarded the rules, opening the door to forgeries".

Quoting from the same document, CHAOS to CORRUPTION, a 1993 New York City public document, Sister Elizabeth Kelliher, a longtime board member in Community School, BROKE the LAW, to secure the requisite number of nominating signatures. Kelliher, again quoting from the same document, " had one set of volunteers collecting nomination signatures, then allegedly asked those who were not present when the signatures were obtained, to FALSELY SWEAR that they witnessed them". In fact, according to this document, " FORGED DOCUMENTS APPEAR on SEVERAL PAGES of Kelliher's petition".

While I could endlessly expose Dera and its shenanigans, I shall exercise some restraint. After all, their lawyer and chair of the B.C. Civil Liberties AssociationJason Gralt has already threatened me with legal action and told me to shut down my blog - fancy that from the leader of a group espousing free speech. But I digress.

I'll leave it up to the public though to decide whether the Dera organization is a suitable group to receive public trust tax dollars considering the questionable conduct of its Leadership and Staff.